The kids really enjoyed Christmas this year. On the carpet, Santa left Jonah a train that runs by itself on the tracks. It was the first thing Jonah noticed, and he was thrilled. That train has hardly stopped chugging for two days now.

And he brought a bouncy horse for Nora, and it is so funny to watch her get going really fast on it.

Jonah wanted to dig into his stocking first and loved finding more little treats from Santa – “a candy cane!! a street sweeper!!”

Nora dug right into her pile of gifts.

ooohhh… trains on a placemat!

And the kids were really cute, showing their gifts to each other.

I asked Nora if she wanted to give Jonah his present from her and she brought it over and said, “Jonah! It’s a Thomas present!!” (before he opened it) :)

She also cracked us up when she opened this gift and said, “A box of cupcakes… what a great idea!!”

I made a doll bed for Nora for Christmas (with a little help from Jonah – he drew the original plan and he was pretty excited to try some real sawing and hammering). So we made the bed frame and then I also sewed up a mattress, sheet, quilt, and pillow. I was super proud of how it turned out, so it was great to see how much Nora loved it, too.

Then Nora wanted to try out the bedding for herself.

And dragged the bed into her room to practice taking a nap with her babies.

Jonah was pleased with his own pair of fleecy, mom-made baseball pants. He wants me to make some for Sean, too.

Then Jonah discovered another box from Santa that had even more train cars and tracks. What fun!

And Nora was very happy with her set of cookware (and her shopping cart which I don’t have a good picture of yet), so now she can wake up her sleeping babies, put them in a cart, go shopping for food, come home and cook it, feed the babies, and put them down for a nap. Very cute.

After breakfast today, Nora started in on a few of her presents. Jonah wanted her to open his gift first. The day before when we wrapped it, Jonah said he knew just what he wanted the tag to say, and he got to work. He brought it over to me and it said, “From: Jonah – To: Nora – Hi Nora. I am giving you a Phillies hat for your birthday.” What a great tag!

Then they both tested out their Phillies moves.

Nora was a pro at the whole unwrapping part.

She loved playing with her new doll accessories, changing the baby, and ‘packing up the baby’s bag.’

Then she decided to try on the baby’s new pants. Silly Nora.

Her big gift this year was a balance bike, and she likes it, but has been very good at sharing with Jonah, who loves it. :)

They both enjoyed playing ‘tea party’ today with “real water!” and cheerios. Jonah was the very happy pourer.

And then Nora accidentally knocked over the sugar bowl of cheerios while trying the put the lid on, and it surprised both kids so much that they cracked up for minutes about it.

After lunch, it was cake time!!

Nora quickly blew out the candles and needed no convincing to dive right in.

Last weekend, we saw that Toys-R-Us was having a Thomas activity day, so we went to check it out and the kids loved playing at the train table.

And of course, Nora’s right there, figuring out how to play, too.

Then that afternoon, Jonah and I walked over to the fairgrounds where they were having a model railroad show, and he put a smile on the faces of many old train collectors with his excited yells about some engine or freight car that he saw. He even got to use the controller for one of the little engines and made it go forward and backward.

And now some of Jonah’s recent drawings…

He drew me “a replay” of something he saw in a baseball game because I missed it and he felt that it was very important for me to see what happened. Here we have the pitcher (in blue) on the mound throwing the ball to the batter who’s standing in his batter’s box. They are even wearing cleats (my favorite part).

Then the second baseman had to dive to catch the ball and get to second base to get the runner out. Also, it is a night game with a moon and some stars. (He’s been working very hard trying to draw stars lately. Nora really likes it when I draw stars for her, and I think it makes him want to draw them, too.)

Earlier this week, I was doing something with Nora, and Jonah was working at his table. He was making up rules for a game that he thought of using his ‘Thomas reader’, which is one of those red cellophane things you can hold over a special design to see the ‘secret’ message underneath. He was very proud to explain the rules to me. It says, “Flip the Thomas reader arond and arond til Thomas reader lands on one of the engines we hvint seen before.” (You kind of have to look around the page for the words near the end – ‘on one of the engines’ is mirror image at the bottom). :)

And when that happened, we got to cross off a number on the scoreboard he made to go with this game.

A dump truck driving on a sunny AND rainy day, so there’s also a rainbow, of course!

Finally, Nora gets a turn to try drawing on the iPad, because if Jonah does it…

She draws a lot of ‘ducks’ and is very pleased with herself when she does. :)

First things first – Jonah and Nora got a new cousin this week, just in time for Christmas! Phoebe Magnolia was born early Tuesday morning, the 21st. Sooo cute, and we can’t wait to meet her! When I told Jonah about the baby cousin, he said, “Um, but they are still going to live at their house, right?” I think one baby girl in his space is all he wants to handle. ;) He has enjoyed looking at Phoebe’s name, though, and noticing all the interesting spelling things going on, like the “Ph” at the beginning, an “o” that doesn’t make a sound, and the “e” at the very end that actually does. He’s our little word master.

OK. Now on to Christmas Eve. Before bed, Jonah and Nora got in their Christmas jammies and both made drawings for Santa.

Jonah drew Henry and James, the trains, because they’re Christmas colors, and put Bertie the Bus at the bottom. I’ll let you guess what Nora drew. ;)

Reading the Night Before Christmas with Dad.

Bringing out a plate with cookies for Santa

Jonah swoops in to save Santa’s cookies from the speedy and determined Nora.

Nora did not need help opening presents today, aside from the occasional ribbon. She totally knows what she’s doing!

She enjoyed opening her presents, as well as admiring Jonah’s.

She got a raincoat, now that she’s going to be walking around in the rain for the next six months, and she wanted to put it on right away. How cute is this?

And Santa brought Jonah just what he wanted – trains with faces, like Thomas! Mom had a lot of fun building the track, too. :)

The real trick is going to be keeping Nora from “playing” too much with the tracks while Jonah’s busy with it, too. She loves trains, just like her big brother!

Finally, we showed them the big felt playhouse I made for them which fits over a card table. They love it! (which is good because I can’t even begin to count the number of hours that went into making it…) ;)

Here’s Jonah peeking out the door.

And Nora really likes crawling in and out and in and out and peeking out the windows. The mailbox opens for mail to go into the house. There is a jingly ‘doorbell’ to the left of the door. I made some keys that go in the keyhole, and they can pick the flowers.

The other sides. . .

A garden with corn and carrots to pick. A pond that fish and ducks can go in. Removable train cars with Jonah as the driver (of course) and the rest of the family as passengers. A moon and sun can be changed out for day and night.

The back side is the market. There are shelves and a crate to hold veggies from the garden or other things for sale. The window shade can go down when the store is closed, and there is a removable shopping bag to use.

The other side has a window with windowbox for flowers and flowers to pick in the grass below. Apples can come off of the tree, as can the chunks of leaves if they want a more wintry tree-branch look. Originally I thought I’d make some fall leaves, too, but yeah… we’ll see…